Curiosity

He crept cautiously forward, head down. The sand hissed at him as the waves retreated, skittish and mercurial, like the wild child crouched among them. Another step forward.

A dozen feral eyes pinned on him; gleaming reflective stares. Several finely-boned, hairless cats crept around the stones she perched on. They measured him for potential as food, as threat, as intruder. He paid the savage stares no mind and focused on the girl.

She was smaller than any sphinx he had seen. From a tangled mass of dark hair several black horns emerged in graceful curves. Her eyes were the sky grey of the water and just as cold. However delicate her bones appeared, he did not doubt her threat to him.

It was not a fear of claw and fang, of lean muscle. The air around her was scattered with stones and debris, levitating like waiting fists. Behind her larger boulders crept from side to side, like an irritated tail, flicking back and forth. He was all too conscious of how delicate his own bones could be.

In those bones he felt a purring vibration, a tension of things in motion stopping, for an instant. The stones hovered, poised in the air waiting on the feral one’s aggression. He took another step forward. Her eyes followed him, waiting. The stones, waiting.

“I bring no harm, but a gift.” he promised her. Did she speak? Did she understand the words he spoke? He raised his hands, palms forward, a universal signal of truce. “I can give you knowledge.”

Around her the rocks wove slowly upwards, still waiting. There was a flash in her eyes; not the blunt aggression of a wild animal but the hungry curiosity of a sharp mind. A look no amount of living wild could dull. A look he mirrored back at her.

Last year, I was working with a fantastic group of artists - and we decided to create an art book together, which led to us forming a company, Boneshaker Press. After months creating our book, Encounters with the Imaginary, we ran a Kickstarter to get it published and raised over $11,000 of our $8,000 goal! It was incredible. We learned so much over the course of the year and seeing all our hard work result in a beautiful physical book was esp rewarding! And we have so many more ideas! We just published our second book online, a digital coloring book of Victorian Magicians. You can check out our website and store for more information and to find our books!

I loved the little hairless cats in this painting so much, that I decided to create four mini paintings, featuring each one.